Robert Haley Asher was born 28 March 1868, to Josephus Marion Asher, who was the first commercial nurseryman in the San Diego area, providing buyers with fruit trees, shrubs, & vines from his Fruit Vale ranch in Paradise Valley, National City. Robert Asher settled on Palomar Mountain in 1903, & ultimately had 160 acres, living in the Pauma Creek / State Park area. Robert Asher also lived off Palomar Mountain part of the year working as a nurseryman. On Palomar, Asher took & sold photographs of summer campers, sold postcards of his photos, trapped animals for pelts, collected & sold wild plants, picked apples, & worked odd jobs. Asher moved off Palomar Mountain in 1946 to his sister Mrs. Josephine A. Vacher’s place on Fuerte Drive in El Cajon & continued to visit Palomar Mountain until 1951. Asher passed away on 25 April 1953.

Asher’s Trip to San Jacinto Peak is dated June 1903 in the synopsis at end. “When, in 1903, an influential group of Los Angeles citizens, concerned about forests and watershed protection, approached the University of California, President Benjamin Wheeler called upon Jepson and Professor Arnold Stubenrauch of the agriculture department(?) to conduct what turned out to be a very successful forestry summer camp at Idyllwild in the San Jacinto Mountains. The 10 lectures which Jepson delivered dealt with “Life-history of a Tree,” “Classification of Forest Trees,” and “Forests of California.”” FROM: Willis Linn Jepson -- “The Botany Man” Richard G. Beidleman, 2000  Also included is plant collecting for Carl Purdy.